91 pages • 3 hours read
Jon GordonThe Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 7-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “You’re the Driver”
At Joy’s request, passenger Danny, an accountant and Joy’s rule keeper, presents George with the first rule: “You’re the Driver of Your Bus” (25).
Joy explains that unless we assume responsibility for the results in our life, we’ll blame others, giving them control over our outcomes. She asks Marty, the bus’s research guy, to find the statistic about when people are most likely to die. Marty consults his laptop and announces that more people die at 9:00 a.m. on Monday than at any other time. Joy says, “People would rather die than go to work” (27), which suggests most people feel trapped and helpless. They can, however, choose their lives and where their bus will go.
George protests that over time outsiders—the government, the boss, the spouse—slowly take over a person’s life, telling them what they can and can’t do. Joy tells George to smile; he does so. Joy points out that his energy rose simply from smiling. She asks him about his vision for his life. George doesn’t know, beyond getting away from his current one.
Joy pulls a children’s book from her satchel and hands it to George. On the cover is a picture of a bus emblazoned with the words “Energy Bus.” George is skeptical; Joy insists that the most profound truths are the simplest. He reads the simple words, among them: “Just say where you want to go and believe that it will be so […] if you have a desire then you also have the power to make it happen” (30).
At work George looks at a paper Joy gave him. On it, she wrote instructions: George must decide what he wants, resolve to create it, and write down his visions for his life, his work, and his relationship and family.
Chapter 8 Summary: “It’s All About Energy”
The next day on the bus Joy tells George that, according to Einstein, the universe and all the matter in it is made up of energy. Everything in life, from other people to the foods we eat, the music we hear, and even our thoughts, can boost our energy or sap it. When George writes down his vision for life, it brings him energy. When he knows where he wants to go, this will mobilize that energy.
Chapter 9 Summary: “George Shares His Vision”
It’s been so long since George thought about what he really wants from life that it’s hard to write it down. Once he begins, though, it feels good.
In college George was a star lacrosse player; back then he felt happy and alive. Now he wants to lose weight, get back into shape, and recover that feeling of aliveness. He also wants to be a better father to his children and recover with his wife their ability to laugh together and be in love again. George fears he’ll fail; Joy tells him to trust the process.
At work George wants to rally his team to create a successful launch of their next product, the NRG-2000 light bulb. He worries that because they’re only about 20% ready, they won’t be ready in time. Joy suggests that it often takes a crisis to inspire change: “Sometimes we have to see what we don’t want, to know what we do want” (39). In every crisis lies an opportunity.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Focus”
Danny retrieves a paper with the second rule written on it: “Desire, Vision, and Focus Move Your Bus in the Right Direction” (41).
Joy explains that the energy of thought is magnetic, and that what we focus on in our thoughts attracts those things into our lives. People who complain tend to get more problems to complain about. It’s better, then, to focus on what we do want. She declares, “We’re Winners, Not Whiners” (43). The passengers laugh and chant that motto.
Marty hands his laptop to George. On the screen is research into the effects of visualization on Olympic athletes. All the contestants use it, visualizing a “best performance” hour after hour. Anyone can do the same. Joy says, “If you build it in your mind, focus on seeing it, and take action, the success will come” (44).
George feels doubtful. Can athletic visualization work in real life? At this point in his own life, George realizes he might as well try it out.
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Power of Positive Energy”
At Joy’s direction, Danny pulls from his briefcase a sign with a formula on it: “E + P = O” (46). “E” represents events in one’s life; “P” stands for perception; “O” is outcome. “P” can also mean “positive energy,” when an unfortunate event is seen not as a roadblock but as a reminder of the good things a person already has. Files piled up on your desk? Then you have a job, which is a good thing. Caught in traffic? You have a car, which is vastly better than walking a long distance.
Danny then shows George the third rule: “Fuel Your Ride with Positive Energy” (47).
Joy explains that positive energy isn’t phony chest-thumping but “trust, faith, enthusiasm, purpose, joy, and happiness” (47). If a person doesn’t fill the tank with positive thoughts, feelings, and actions—all of which add up to positive energy—then negative energy will fill the void.
Joy asks Marty to read a passage to George from the children’s book, which she now calls “That Energy Book” (49). In the story a man tells a sage that he feels as if he has two dogs inside him, one nice and one mean. They always fight, and he fears which will win. The sage answers, “The one you feed the most, so feed the positive dog” (49). Marty gifts George the book, and Joy suggests he start by doing one of the book’s 10-minute exercises. George agrees.
Chapters 7-11 Analysis
Bus driver Joy introduces George to the first three of the 10 rules for effective living.
Chapters 8 and 11 focus on energy. Joy asserts that everything in the universe is made of energy, even matter. As evidence, she cites Einstein’s famous equation E=MC^2, which correlates mass to energy. She then declares that energy manifests in human life as positive or negative energy, which boosts you up or brings you down.
Technically, energy as a physics term and energy as a psychological experience aren’t strictly the same. Readers with strong scientific training may wish to regard the use of energy in both senses as an analogy. As a training method for personal growth, this analogy can be an effective, informal way of organizing our pictures of how energy works in the mind and body. Its purpose is to focus attention on bringing positive and energetic feelings to one’s life instead of negative, pessimistic, listless ones.
In Chapter 10 Joy claims that what people focus on, good or bad, is drawn to them. This is the basic principle of most American schools of positive thinking and creative visualization, which have their origins in the 19th-century belief system called New Thought. This philosophy teaches that the mind creates a person’s reality and that illness originates in thought.
Many 20th-century self-help books took up this idea, including 1937’s Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, the 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, Psycho-Cybernetics published by Maxwell Maltz in 1960, and a series of books by therapist Wayne Dyer, among dozens if not hundreds of other titles. Several psychological studies suggest that optimism enhances outcomes, and many athletic organizations get good results with contestants who visualize winning when practicing their sport. Optimism is an important side effect of positive visualization, and research indicates that optimists tend to live longer.
Marty, a passenger on the Energy Bus, enjoys finding scientific studies that validate the principles of positive energy. He mentions several to George during the story. Some skeptics might argue that one or more of these studies support Joy’s arguments weakly, if at all. However, the main point is that science has taken an interest in positive attitudes and constructive visualization, and there is plenty of compelling evidence that these methods do improve outcomes.
In Chapter 10 Joy mentions that a person can take negative energy and “transform it.” This echoes a saying of Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor who wrote that “the obstacle becomes the way.” Any hardship, challenge, or opposition can be reshaped into a source of support if a person studies it carefully. A wall that blocks passage can become a defensive battlement; a flood can become a source of transport; enemies, properly taunted, can be made to commit errors that undermine their advantages.
Marcus Aurelius’s journal Meditations became a pillar of Stoicism, an ancient philosophy of serenity and equanimity that has been revived in recent years in the West. Like The Energy Bus, Stoicism recommends that we transform our attitudes so that we remain calm and focused no matter what problems or unpleasant people we encounter. The Energy Bus goes a step further by suggesting that people visualize the outcome they want in any situation.
